


Shades of Survival

by epsiloneridani



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: canon-typical language and violence, implied PTSD, inspired by a tumblr post
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-01 08:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15770367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani
Summary: When Isaac wakes up, he has one goal. When Isaac wakes up, he has one target. Sam betrayed him. Sam is going to die.There’s just one problem.He’s not alone.//brief hiatus in effect





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Canon-typical language and violence, PTSD/implied PTSD
> 
> Inspired by riathedreamer‘s post: http://riathedreamer.tumblr.com/post/173775520552/as-much-as-i-usually-agree-with-grif-that-dead

Being dead is easy. Coming back, on the other hand – not so much.

—

Orange is the shade of survival.

His helmet is scuffed and scarred scarlet, a gruesome canvas to commemorate an even more gruesome end. He scrubs at it aimlessly, swiping tattered fingers over the scored ridges and ravines like it’ll make any difference, like it can change the way his hands shake, like it can wash away grief’s stain. Blood red is too bright and dried maroon too dull – but it’s there and it’s not going away.

It could be worse.

It could be green.

He’s not sure at first who brought him back to life – or why – but he shuts his eyes and sinks into sleep and suddenly there are searing white lights and a screaming pain and a calm voice, always so cold:  _don’t move_. He’s fighting, he’s falling, his chest is on fire and he’s thrashing and writhing but when his eyes fly open he’s staring at a ceiling, heaving for breath and tugging at the phantom steel around his wrists.

Ever since they moved him out of the lab, he’s been watched.

The room’s more of a cell than general living quarters. The silhouette that’s started to darken his door every now and again isn’t so much startling as it is unsettling.

“Why’d you bring me back?” he asks without looking up from the helmet.

The phantom shifts in his peripheral. It walks long and smooth but its torso juts forward at an angle that’d be unnatural for a human being. He saw enough Sangheili in the War to know one when he sees it now, even completely covered in armor as it may be. “Science,” it – she? – says, and the mandibles click contemplatively. “We didn’t think it would work.”

“Why  _me?_ ”

“Why not you?” she scoffs and she doesn’t say it but he hears it anyway:  _who’d miss a dead man?_  Isaac snorts softly and she shifts a step into the room, slithering, sinewy shadow. “The Huragok know more than they tell us. The Forerunners were full of secrets.”

Huragok: Forerunner technicians, floaty little geniuses to serve the spooks that built the ring assembly to sterilize the galaxy. The UNSC grabbed one during the Battle of Mombasa and it turned the tide of the War, or so the story goes. He doesn’t know. He was on the ground, back-to-back with Sam and scrambling for his life.

He can’t imagine ever turning his back to Sam again.

“So?” Isaac grits out.

She traces a claw along the doorframe, pondering. “We weren’t going to try the device on one of our own.”

“What, you can cure  _death_  now?”

She laughs, a grating rumble. “No. The device regenerates. Strengthens. You were a trial.”

He doesn’t ask how many more died for their little experiment. If you’re smart, you don’t play with Forerunner artifacts: they’re just as liable to save you as  _incinerate_  you.

“The hell do  _you_  need Forerunner steroids for?” he asks snidely. His knuckles shine white in the wan light. The helmet’s jagged edges drive into his palms. The visor is shattered on one side and if he runs his hand around the inside, he can still feel the coarse flecks of dried blood.

Orange is the shade of survival. Crimson is the shade of defeat.

“Not us,” she says. “Our employers.”

They’re bounty hunters, then: a whole crew. “ _Fine_. What the hell do  _they_  need Forerunner steroids for?”

She shrugs, an odd loll of one shoulder and not the other. “What I can tell you…depends.”

“On  _what?_ ”

“On what you do next.”

Isaac scoffs and tosses the helmet on the cot in the corner. It bounces once and then settles on the edge, balanced haphazardly over oblivion. “The hell’s  _that_ supposed to mean?” he demands, crossing his arms.

“You’re not a prisoner. Just a test subject. Where you go next is entirely up to you.”

“What are my options?”

Her chuckle is pensive and wry and cold, strange for a member of a species that’s renowned for its fiery discipline and fierce control. “Whatever you want them to be,” she answers, and with a clack of the mandibles she’s gone: a phantom to the shadows.

By the time the shadow slithers across his door again, he knows his answer.

“Say I agree to work with you,” Isaac calls out, folding his arms and lounging languidly against the wall. She stares at him; though she’s armored he feels the disdainful blink. “What do you get out of this deal?”

“You have your life and we have more answers,” she points out, bemused and sliding a tray onto the table in the corner – not real food, just rations. Nice. “I’d think that that would be enough.”

“Not so much.”

She snorts softly. “What do you want from us, Isaac Gates? Your resurrection isn’t enough?”

Never look twice at a gift if you want to keep it – especially if that gift is your life. It’s one of his and Sam’s rules. No. One of  _his_  rules. “I’ve got questions, you’ve got the answers.”

She stares at him.

“Look, you said my options are whatever I want them to be. I’m choosing to join up, help you, give you contacts. Whatever you need. Provided I get some  _damned answers_  first.”

She scoffs. Her arms fall to her sides, loose, open. Unafraid. “Ask.”

It’s been burning in his chest since she last strolled by. “How in the  _hell_  am I alive?”

“We found your body in a stasis pod in a decaying orbit around a nearby star. We actively scan and search for these. I’m sure you can imagine why.”

The blood’s still scarred into his helmet. Right. “No one misses the dead.”

She shrugs. “They suit our purposes.”

Isaac coughs a laugh. “So what, you find my dead body, you bring me back – how? Some Forerunner device you just  _happen_  to have lying around? That just  _happens_  to work?”

“We don’t have all the answers, Isaac Gates. There are thousands of variables to analyze. Cause of death. Duration. Decay. Stasis unit model and effectiveness. Any non-fatal injuries the subject sustained prior to their demise.”

“Has this worked on anyone else?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“ _Has it?_ ”

She shrugs. “It depends on what you define as ‘working.’”

“Has it brought anybody else  _back to life?_ ”

“What do you define as  _living?_ ”

Damned cryptics. Damned Washington. “As someone who has a  _living_ ,  _breathing_   _body_.”

“Oh.” She pauses for a long moment. “Then yes. We  _have_  succeeded.”

He was almost afraid to ask. He didn’t think he’d get an answer. Isaac pushes himself to stand and take a step closer. “So you resurrect me. And you send me on my way. That’s it. No catch.”

"Correct.”

"Excuse my  _tone_ , but no one’s that generous.”

She blows out a breath, a soft puff of disdain that rattles through her helmet’s speakers. “We picked you up because you could be of limited use to us. That use has come to an end. Killing you just leaves us with another dead body – and that’s something I’d like to avoid.”

Isaac stares at her for a beat. “All right,” he says, and his brain is tick-tick-ticking, wary. Quid pro nihilo: something for nothing. Not very common. Not very economic, either, especially in this line of work. “Then that’s settled.”

She’s unmoving, unreadable. Helmets are about as expressive as a brick wall when held steady. Her body language’s not much more informative. Isaac fights down the irritation bubbling in his chest and clasps his hands in front of him.

“And  _since_  that’s settled we can move on to more important matters. You know, like our deal.”

"We are not striking a  _deal_ ,” she says calmly. “You are welcome to join the ship’s crew but there are no contracts. Either you’re here of your own free will or we drop you at the nearest spaceport.”

“Who the hell runs a crew like that?”

“We do a job, we get paid, and we  _distribute_  the pay. It’s simple. Why complicate it?”

"With a crew big enough to fill this thing?” It’s not a Charon-class, not like the  _Dawn_ , and certainly not a supercarrier like  _Infinity_ , but it’s still massive enough hold a couple hundred mercenaries at  _least_. “That’s gotta be a  _hell_  of a job.”

"Yes,” she agrees. “It is.”

A hell of a job means a hell of a payday. Payday means resources – and resources fuel revenge.

He can’t imagine ever turning his back to Sam again.

"All right,” he says. “You have my attention.”

\--


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the bounty hunters are after's not really clear, but whatever the endgame is, they need something from this planet to get it.
> 
> Surprises are always expected in this line of work. That doesn't mean they're welcome, though.

The Hydra system is a haven for hell-dwellers.

The UNSC bombed it into submission after the Massacres almost two hundred years ago, before the War hit and the whole system went the way of long-forgotten Chorus – if Chorus was a hive of pirates, slavers, and mercenaries. It’s not the kind of place you just wander into.

Which is exactly what these people are planning to do.

Isaac folds his arms over his chest. Hydra looms on the starmaps projected against the viewscreen, a few minutes out once they engage the impulse drive again. “Seriously,” he says for the thousandth time, “what the hell are we here for?”

“You’ll see when we reach it,” Jalai says calmly. She told him her name offhandedly, an odd lapse he doesn’t care enough to puzzle through. “Are you prepared?”

They gave him the tools to fix his armor, repair his helmet, and repaint the color scheme: burning, blazing orange. “Of course,” he says, and it rolls off his tongue easily despite the urgency ticking in his chest. The knife is back in his hand, twirling absently, and the human at the helm stiffens just enough for Isaac to know he’s getting a wary side-eye through the teal visor. It’s not out of character. Everyone he’s passed in the halls with Jalai does the same damn thing, which is weird considering they’re just a band that the captain – whoever the hell that is – pulled together to do a job. There’s no camaraderie in that kind of crew. New faces are the norm; nobody questions it because nobody _should_ question it. Get in, do the job, get out. Nobody dies, everybody wins, and you never see each other again.

He and Sam were never much for crews.

The engines rumble to life, a dull thrum beneath his feet, and the knife stills. The stars roll by, silent beasts burning themselves to death in the empty night. It’s less than a few minutes to reach their destination; it feels like an eternity.

The world’s one he recognizes almost immediately. Agora’s a planetwide black market venue that doesn’t even bother to try to mask its activity. The UNSC doesn’t come out this far anymore; they’ve got bigger problems – like rebuilding after a twenty-seven year war.

“ _Really_ ,” Isaac says dryly, following the group Jalai assigned him toward the ramp. Teal-Visor shoulders by him and he quirks a brow none of them can see. Jalai keys the hatch and steps back. Not coming with them, then.

Isaac pauses. “Really,” he repeats, meeting her gaze through her helmet. “No one’s gonna fill me in.”

“Just follow us and you’ll be fine,” Teal-Visor says.

Isaac scoffs.

“Your objective will be clear when you encounter it,” Jalai cuts in, calm as always, though this time with an edge that sends Tealy back a step. “That’s all the information you need.”

“You guys _suck_ at team communication.”

“Hey, Chatterbox,” Tealy grits out, clicking an ammunition cartridge into his magnum and sliding it into a thigh holster. No need to conceal it; the place is lawless. “Why don’t you shut the hell up and fall in line? We’ll let you know what you need to know.”

Isaac coughs a laugh. “First of all, hotshot, the name’s _Felix_. Second of all, if you think I’m taking orders from _you?_ You are in for a _rude_ awakening.”

“I’m squad leader,” he growls back. “Get in line.”

“All right, ‘ _squad leader_ ’, lemme ask you this: how many bounties have you run? How many of them successfully?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “My count’s in the hundreds. Success rate in the high nineties. If you think you’re somehow _qualified_ to tell _me_ what—”

“Where does Chorus fit?”

It’s not Tealy that calls it out. The voice is too low, too gravelly, too old. “Excuse me?” Isaac demands. Jalai is silent, still poised to pull the hatch release the rest of the way, but not paralyzed by fear; it’s like she’s studying them, pulling them apart in her mind. More than a little unnerving. Isaac sweeps his gaze by her. “I _said_ ,” he snarls, “ _excuse me?_ ”

Whoever called it out is either too cowardly to repeat it or just daring enough to revel in their anonymity. “You know what?” Isaac says. They’re all silent, staring. Tealy’s hand twitches over his holster. “It doesn’t matter. You know why? Because I’m going to find out eventually. And when I do, I’m going to kill you.”

He doesn’t mean a damn word of it. They’re his only means of transportation and payment – for the moment, at least.

They don’t have to know that, though.

“Move out,” Tealy repeats, a low growl. Jalai’s motionless, contemplative or staring into someone’s soul like she can see past oblivion. Turning his back to her sends pinpricks down his spine, a cool chill he feels in his bones.

The knife is solid silver in his hand.

Agora hasn’t had a sane organizational system since it fell into disarray after the UNSC all but abandoned Hydra. The streets are a disaster, the infrastructure even more so. Half of the buildings are barely standing; the other half are brimming with mercs managing their merchandise. Covenant craters create alleys beneath the earth, another level of underworld you only venture into if you’re looking for a one-way ticket on a slaver ship. Tealy marches past one of the ravines, smart enough to recognize the stupidity or else oblivious to it because it has nothing to do with their actual objective.

Isaac elbows his way through the small squad – ten people’s too many people for one group since the UNSC discharged him – until he’s just behind Tealy. “So,” he says, biting back a grin when ‘squad leader’ jumps, “what are we looking for?”

“Not what,” the Brute to his right says gruffly. “ _Who_.”

Tealy doesn’t like that, clearly, but what’s he gonna do, make him take it back? “ _Who_ ,” Isaac echoes. “Woulda been nice to know that back on the ship, I could’ve contacted some sources, put together some—”

“We don’t need your help, _Felix_.”

“Two points for hotshot: he remembered my name.”

“We have all the data we need,” Tealy repeats, shrugging away from the intrusion to his personal space. There’s a handheld display blinking in his palm, a locator beacon. “We tagged him a while ago.”

“What’s he got that we want?”

“Not your problem.”

“If I’m risking my life for it, it kinda _is_.”

“You’re risking your life to get _paid_.”  
“Aren’t we all,” Isaac drawls. Tealy snorts and turns back to the ’padd.

“Half a klik east. Let’s go.”

They’re _really_ just gonna strut through Agora and attack a guy in broad daylight. Isaac rolls his eyes and drops back. If anyone’s getting shot today, it sure as hell isn’t him.

He expects them to stop in the more industrial sector; it’s where they keep all the good stuff, large-scale weapons of mass destruction. But they don’t stop; they pass right through and keep going, winding their way out of the central city’s catacombs, hiking over the remains of a wall that probably never worked very well anyway, and striding into the wastelands beyond. Smoke drifts up in the distance, swirling high above the encampment set on the horizon.

“Why the _hell_ are we heading to a refugee camp?” Isaac demands. There’s nothing valuable there; they’re broke enough as it is or they wouldn’t be out here struggling to survive on sand and sheer will in the wastelands of Agora.

“Because that’s where our _target_ is.”

“Our target’s a refugee.”

“ _No_ ,” Tealy says, and there’s a hard edge to his voice that says he’s uncomfortable and trying cover it with a cool-guy façade. New to this line of work – or else he’s just never been in Hydra before.

The tents are sparsely spaced, packed together for safety, to seem smaller. The less people there are, the less attention they get. Isaac scoffs. There are fresh graves thirty feet outside the makeshift gate to the encampment. Didn’t look small enough soon enough – or else anything they tried just _wasn’t_ enough.

“Target’s twenty meters out. Move to positions.”

They never gave him one. Apparently there’s an entire plan of attack that doesn’t involve him. Isaac grits his teeth and stays in the center while the others split off and peel away, disappearing behind the ragged canvas tents. His knife slides back into his gauntlet; his magnum is clutched close, not lifted, not aimed, but still at the ready.

Even ‘squad-leader’s’ vanished.

“What in the _hell?_ ”

_“Keep moving forward.”_

He’s the damned _bait_. He doesn’t know why he expected anything less. No one misses the dead. No one cares if he’s alive.

 _“Keep moving forward. Copy,_ Felix _?”_

He doesn’t know why he didn’t just slit the guy’s throat when he had the chance. “Oh, I copy,” Isaac shoots back. “But ‘squad leader’?”

A pause. _“Go ahead.”_

“When this is over? I’d watch my back if I were you.”

There’s a crackle of static he interprets as a chuckle. Guess they’ll see how funny he finds it when he has a knife sticking out from between his ribs; it makes it a hell of a lot harder to laugh.

_“Felix.”_

Isaac scowls and tightens his grip on the magnum. “Moving to position.”  
Which means ‘walking right into the target’s line of sight.’ Maybe they won’t see them coming. Maybe they’re not expecting them. They were incompetent enough to get hit with a long-distance tracker in the first place. It’s not that implausible: there are idiots all over the galaxy.

He and Sam ran across enough of them.

_“Anytime today, Felix.”_

There’s no more Sam watching his back.

“Take a damn breath,” Isaac snaps, “I’m _going_.”

The target’s somewhere in a makeshift bazaar. There are cracked crates crammed haphazardly on top of one another, spilling medical supplies that a ragged group of children is frantically trying to shove into their bags. Street kids. Of course Agora has them. Why wouldn’t it?

_“Felix.”_

There’s a little boy in his path, stopped in front of him, wide-eyed and gaping with half a roll of bandages hanging out of each hand and a sack that’s too big for his tiny frame digging down into his shoulders. There’s dirt smeared on his face, hair swept back out of his eyes only because it’s so caked in filth. One of the other boys, taller, stronger, steps up beside him and plants a hand on his shoulder, staring straight ahead with a resolve that belies his age. Fearless.

Street kid are survivors.

 _“_ Felix. _Anytime today would be good.”_

Target. Moving to position. Mission. Sam. Survivors. Mission.

Mission.

_“Felix.”_

“Moving to position,” he growls. “Didn’t you get that the last time?”

_“Target’s dead ahead.”_

He sweeps his gaze across the shambling sea. Someone cooking in a corner over an open flame. Another stack of crushed crates. A beggar huddled against a broken brick wall.

And then there’s the target.

Ripping wind, roaring rush: his ribs spear his lungs. His chest fills with blood. His chest fills with rage. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. Partners. Survivors. Brothers. Sam. Sam staring him in the eye and standing back and all but stabbing the knife into his back. Partners, survivors, brothers. Strangers, failures, fallen.

 _Locus_.

“ _Locus_ ,” Isaac snarls, and his voice cracks and rises until it’s a mortal roar. Locus snaps around, rifle up and tracking, tracking. Isaac lifts his magnum, aimed, aimed. _Stop_.

“ _Locus!_ ”

Somewhere in the background Tealy and his team are chattering, collapsing around them in a suffocating circumference, but Isaac doesn’t hear them. His ears are ringing. His chest’s on fire.

And then there’s a flash of bright orange, stepping out from behind a crate, and his vision’s a murderous sunset haze and his heart’s an inferno, a murderous blaze. And then there’s a sim trooper standing at Sam’s side like he’s always been there, like he belongs there, like he’s his _partner_. And then Isaac’s finger is squeezing, squeezing, squeezing the trigger he can’t make himself completely compress – twitching, _twitching_.

“ _You_ ,” Isaac snarls, and the magnum shifts, Sam to the sim. He doesn’t even remember the trooper’s name. It doesn’t _matter_. “Who in the _hell_ are you to—”

Locus is silent, stoic, still.

“ _What?_ ” Isaac barks, a shattered laugh that rattles from his chest like broken glass. The magnum’s shaking, shaking, shaking in his hand and he swings both of his arms wide, out to his sides: completely undefended, open and alone. The sim trooper’s steady, steadier than he remembers any of them ever being, SAW level and on target. Wonder where he learned that from. Wonder from _who_.

Sam has that effect on people.

“ _Felix!_ Stand down!”

He’s so far beyond listening to ‘squad leader.’ Isaac whips around and finds himself face to face with a rifle that could blow his brains out of his head at this range. Outlived his use. No one misses the dead.

“Locus,” Tealy growls without moving the rifle, “hand over the key.”

“It won’t work for you,” the sim trooper says. “It only works if he’s—”

He seems to realize what he’s saying and clamps his mouth shut but it’s too late. Tealy knows. “I never said we needed _you_. We just need the _key_ ,” he says. “Now come along quietly and we might let you  _live_.”

The last time he saw him, Sam wouldn’t have hesitated to start a fight in the center of a refugee camp. The last time he saw him, Sam would have called them _collateral_. The last time he saw him, Sam would have called himself _soldier_.

The last time he saw him, Locus stood aside and let him die.

Sam lowers his rifle, the sim trooper follows his lead, and Tealy jerks his head at the others; they close in. “Why don’t you just shoot him?” Isaac asks wryly.

“Thought you’d wanna do the honors,” Tealy returns, dripping sarcasm. Isaac stares at him and he snorts. “Jalai wants him alive.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“We don’t ask questions. We just do the job.” He turns away to wave at the others. “Move out. _Felix_ , you’ve got guard duty. Watch them.”

In the middle of a pack of bounty hunters. Yeah, they stand a _real_ chance of making a break for it. Isaac stares at him a moment longer and then falls in line by Locus.

“When this is over, you’re _dead_ ,” Isaac growls. Sam doesn’t respond; he’s impassive, a silent sentinel for the sim trooper stuck close to his left side. Isaac scoffs and glances behind.

The boy is standing at the gate, staring after him with burning blue eyes.

It’s a long march back.

\--


End file.
